3D model supported virtual environment for prostate disease interpretation and biopsy design

The diagnosis of localized prostate cancer is carried out by standard core needle biopsies under guidance of transrectal ultrasound imaging of the prostate gland. This paper describes a 3D model supported virtual environment for prostate cancer diagnosis and biopsy design. A 3D deformable reconstruction algorithm is developed to define an object surface from digitally-imaged surgical specimens. A virtual environment with a multimodal visualization capability is integrated to simulate prostate biopsy protocols. The new system permits an accurate graphical modeling of the object of interest, the localization and quantification of tumors, and the definition of the pathways of biopsy needles. The technique allows the medical experts to probe and manipulate the data in 3D view space and to evaluate the performance of simulated biopsies subsequently optimize biopsy techniques. Results and analysis of our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the individual modular components of the approach. We conclude with an application of the complete framework to a prostate biopsy simulation and evaluation task.